Karl teaches graduate Visual Communication Design in New Zealand and has used an adapted compass to turn Honours year students synthesis of their work from a written proposal to an active workshop, experiment, and exhibition of their experimental outcomes. 

Design higher ed, Wellington New Zealand
Bio  Design+Democracy website

Manjula Karamcheti and her former colleagues at the High Meadows Graduate School of Teaching and Learning have been incredible experimenters with the Compass. For example, their Teacher Candidates used it to dig into challenges they met in the field each week during clinical debriefs, and explored the use of a bias lens. Manjula was a wonderful partner in developing our SXSW EDU 2020 workshop “Together! A Tool to Design With and For all Voices.”

Manjula has continued to be an incredible thought partner and advocate in her new role at the Barr foundation.

Teacher Education, Cambridge, MA
Bio

Misty brings expertise in learning design and digital innovation to Digital Promise as a Learning Designer with their Digital Equity team, and to Figma to design conferences as well templates that enable kids to collaborate across classrooms and countries. She created a fantastic Innovators’ Compass Figjam template!

K-12 Innovation, San Francisco area, CA
Bio

Denise has a passion for early childhood education and the emotional development of young people. She works with a variety of educational organizations, and has used the Compass at both organizational and personal levels. 

Educational & organizational consulting, San Antonio, TX
Bio

Daniel uses the Compass for community engagement in settings like Somerville, MA, cultural planning and the Boston Metropolitan Area Planning Council. He’s also been an incredible coach at any hour on graphic design matters!

Urban planning, Boston, MA
Bio

A former first grade teacher, Ann is a Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA) supporting both teachers and students with the innovative and instructional use of technology. And, she has used and shared the compass with the CUE Rockstar community—thank you Ann!

Edtech coaching, Fullerton, CA
Website Compass-tweets

Dvora has shared her use of Compass with other educational therapists to help problem-solve and develop solutions together with both adult and child learners.

Educational therapy, Los Angeles, CA
Bio Website Compass-tweets

Dawan and Danielle founded and lead, respectively, the Elon By Design Initiative to “help make design thinking part of how you live well, learn, teach and achieve.” They’ve used the Compass as an easy introduction to design thinking for new students and for groups doing larger-scale problem solving together. Dawan’s Design Thinking 101 Podcast Interview has sparked many new compass users, and Danielle has been a fantastic thought partner around assessing impact.

Higher Education, Elon, NC
Dawan-BioDanielle-Bio

Caitrin, an anthropologist, has been an amazing co-pilot as we've experimented with the Compass together in our Olin course Engineering for Humanity for Students to design not only something that will make a difference in an older adult's life in the community, but also to design their own individual, team, and class experiences in the course. And, to begin to design their role as a designer in society. More about that course here and under Resources.

Caitrin is also using the Compass in her other classes.

College education, Needham, MA
Bio Website

Tara is a fireball. She's also an educator, instructional coach, author and speaker, who recently became an administrator. She passionately recognized the sensitivity of her role with those she served. She found the Compass through Audrey O'Claire, and fused it with her R.E.A.L. approach in working with individuals to see and support their personal and professional goals. Now she's sharing that combined approach in her book, blog, and speaking.

K-12 Coach and Administrator, Lawrence, KS

Website Compass-Tweets

Garrett has brought the Compass to many new countries—and shared back the translated versions. In his work with PACT, CorpsAfrica, YES, and other organizations, he’s brought the Compass to community members from Malawi and Morocco to the Ukraine and Indonesia.  He's shared it in the most diverse settings—from the Corps Africa community challenges to the National Science Teachers Association STEM education challenges, to New Orleans Public Library challenges. 

He's also the person who said "This might change the world" to me back in January 2016, just when I needed to hear those words as I was diving into full investment in this work. 

International Development, Longmont, CO

Bio Compass-Tweets

In her role facilitating innovation in Ottawa County, Michigan, administration, Shannon McGoran unleashes many different departments with Innovators’ Compass. Parks & Recreation tackled dog rule enforcement, Facilities & Maintenance designed their public communications, Juvenile Detention considered how to best serve their day treatment clients and increase youth engagement, and the Clerk’s office took on team stress.

She also asks me the most thought-provoking questions about Compass facilitation!

County administration, Ottawa County, Michigan.

Bio

Dawn's work and impact in her Aurora, CO school, and humility about it, are simply inspiring. Dawn and I are on the phone all the time.  She's always calling me just before, or just after, she's done something new with the Compass—with all combinations of students, staff, parents, specialists, and administrators.  She's always pushing me for new tools (e.g. the Compass with large visual icons for her highly international parent population), and always eager to give her observations. 

Elementary administration, Aurora, CO
Bio  Compass-Tweets

Caroline has used the Compass almost daily in her high school computer classes at Prospect Hill Academy charter school—more about it here. As they learned to design apps, Caroline's students used Compasses to draw on inspiration from other apps; design their app and their daily tasks on it; capture observations and feedback as they test their app with users; do their final class reflections.

K-12 education, Cambridge, MA
Bio

Borjana Mikic, Faculty Director, and Emily Norton, Staff Director, of Smith College’s Design Thinking Initiative have leveraged the Compass alongside other tools as a quick way to get administrators, faculty, and students collaborating creatively on campus/community challenges.

College design education, Northampton, MA
Borjana bio Emily bio

Whenever I see a bunch of new tweets or followers in a new country, I know Jon has been there as WIDA's International Programs Director, using the compass to enable groups of educators of English Language Learners in international schools to problem-solve together.

K-12 and English Language Education, Madison WI
Bio Compass-Tweets

I am so grateful that Johana has invited me and the Compass to be a part of jumpstarting Latinx education-related entrepreneurs through Latinos For Education where she is Director of National Strategy. Her dedication and thoughts around working toward equity have been an amazing infusion as we’ve worked together to co-create programs.

Education entrepreneurship, Boston, MA
Bio Compass-tweets

At the end of 2017, Hieu—then a Computer Engineering senior at Olin College, who’d taken two of my three classes—asked if he could show me something.

That something was the online Compass app—which instantly blew my mind, and filled a need many people had voiced to me. He then dedicated endless hours to testing and evolving it together.

Software Engineer, San Francisco, CA
Bio Website

Audrey O'Clair has seen no boundaries in her Compass passion and experimentation—from her family's major transitions, to her work coaching special education and ed-tech. I've learned so much from how she creates powerful environments and experiences for all kinds of participants by very simply introducing and using the Compass.

Special Education & Ed Tech, Fayette, Maine
Bio Compass-Tweets

During COVID, Erin found herself leading a 2800-student virtual K-8 “school” and began using the Compass with teachers to navigate the new challenges of equitable digital learning, and has continued to inspire teachers like Karmelann Egan to use the Compass with her kindergarten classroom and family in personal, interpersonal, and project-related challenges.

Compass-tweets

Erin is magical at stirring up creativity in people of all ages. It’s been an inspiration to know her. And to see her writing about working with a class to use the Compass, alongside other wonderful tools, to design their own, inclusive, culture. 

Learning Specialist, Calgary, Alberta
Website  Compass-Tweets

Chelsea educates pre-service teachers at Grand Valley State University. She Compasses with her students, GVSU staff, and her own family. She, Dave Coffey, and Ginger Rohwer redesigned a middle-school summer STEM design program around Innovators' Compass, and shared their valuable learnings about successful prompts!

Higher ed education and K-12 STEM outreach

Bio

Valeria has taken the Compass itself to new languages—Spanish and sketchnotes—in her passion to share it with others. That includes her local classroom as they struggled to find their own video voice and work through their hurricane Irma experience. 

It also includes the larger communities that follow her as a passionately creative science teacher @GA_ScienceRodva and as sketchnoting guru @ValeriaSketches. 

5th-6th grade Science, Miami, FL
Bio  Compass-Tweets

Jean uses the Compass to help family caregivers of the elderly problem-solve like she’d naturally support them as a nurse. It’s been such an infusion getting to experience her unlimited energy and passion.

Nursing and elder care, McCordsville, IN
Bio Website Compass-tweets

Dan Ryder—@WickedDecent—embodies the energy, optimism, inclusion, and relentless innovation of Design Thinking educators. He inspires K-12 educators around the country as he shares his experiences over twitter and his blog.  He also brings them to tears as he interweaves humor and improv.

He was an early Compass experimenter and recently wrote a Medium piece highlighting a a project he did with his English students using the Compass that bridged English and Engineering. 

K-12 education, Jay, ME
Bio  Compass-Tweets

As my studio co-professor for "User Oriented Collaborative Design", Alexandra was always been better than me at noticing times Compass work might help our students move forward—individually, in their design teams, or as a class. She’s now at Florida International University.

Higher-ed, Miami, FL
Bio

A participant in my very first educational coaching program, Ari has stayed in touch and experimented with the compass in both educational and family settings—his blog about compassing school lunch is great.  

K-12 administration, early & special education, school psychology, Washington, DC
Bio

Kim is a speech/language pathologist with deep passion and experience meeting extreme ranges of emotional and cognitive needs. I have learned so much from collaborating with her for SXSWEDU and Deeper Learning, seeing how she's used the Compass with students, and from her generous review of our kids books!

K-12 education, Norton, MA

Website Compass-Tweets